Justice, A Long Time Coming

The decision was not unanimous. Two dissenting judges objected to the fact that his diary was made available to the court martial panel:

“These pages included a running diatribe against Caucasians and the United States dating back 12 years, and included repeated references to (his) desire to kill American soldiers ‘for Allah’ and for ‘jihad,' ” Judge James E. Baker noted.

Fair enough, I guess. "Your attorneys could have kept you from getting killed if they'd kept their mouths shut about your true intentions" is a reasonable point, though all things considered I'm glad the panel got to consider that information.

Judge James E. Baker, conveniently retired, centered his dissent regarding the diary on the premise that the armed forces have no guidelines regarding the qualifications, training, or performance required of capital defense counsel.

Gotta have a rule for everything anybody ever does.

Thb-b-b-b-t

Kaffee: Corporal, would you turn to the page in this book that says where the mess hall is, please.

Cpl. Barnes: Well, Lt. Kaffee, that's not in the book, sir.

Kaffee: You mean to say in all your time at Gitmo you've never had a meal?

Like I said--conveniently retired. Else we'd have to hold him accountable for acting outside existing guidelines regarding the qualifications, training, or performance required of capital defense judges to have the sense God gave gnat, and impeach his gnat's patootie.

I'd also be curious to know how a capital case is different from any other murder case as that difference applies to how counsel should present evidence regarding a descent into insanity.

If the defense counsel screwed that up, they'd have screwed it up in just the same way (assuming they'd chosen to present the diary) had their client only been liable for life imprisonment. Capital qualification seems irrelevant to that.

It speaks to intent and motive. (Although his lawyers seem to have introduced it hoping it would show he was mentally ill.)

I do think that may say something about current society's tendency to conflate "murderous intent" with "mental illness". We have a serious problem taking jihadists at their word - they're either mentally ill or "frustrated over legitimate grievances" or "expressing their unique culture" or something, but when they say "We're going to conquer you and kill any who resist", somehow they never really mean they intend to conquer us and kill any who resist.